Today I started out with the easy, no-brainer, plan of making an egg salad sandwich.

I ended up with a Frankenstein's monster sandwich and a slightly sprained ankle because that's how things are here at The Frimmyhausen.

In my opinion, egg salad needs to be simple because I like to taste the filling and egg salad has mild flavour, so I use a minimum of seasoning, white bread and iceberg lettuce.

These are things I normally avoid in sandwiches but egg salad is an exception. The basic recipe I use is two eggs per sandwich, hard boiled obviously, mayo and salt to taste and that's it.

Challenge 1

How to hard boil an egg. I know how to boil eggs, it's simplicity itself. Today, however, the lad forgot his two kilo calculator (the one that analyzes quark rotation speed in an atom, Borg assimilation patterns in the Delta quadrant and particulate in the air after a fart) which he needed for math, stellar cartography and general teenage boy shenanigans. I ran it over to him and left my eggs on the stove and so they over cooked a little.

Next time:

Start eggs in cold, salted water. Bring to a boil, cover and turn off the heat. Set timer for ten to fifteen minutes depending on how soft or hard you want your eggs.

Note: Do not leave the house during this time.

Challenge 2(ever have one of those moments when a word is spelled right, but it doesn't look like it is? And the longer you look at it the more wrong it seems until it doesn't even look like any English word you've ever seen? That's what's going on with "challenge" at the moment)

I peeled the shell off and I have no egg left. Here's how to peel a hard boiled egg. So, I used fresher than usual eggs and ended up with a yolk surrounded by the tattered remains of egg white flapping in the breeze. This makes for a delightfully yellow egg salad, but not the flavour I wanted. Egg whites stick to the shell when they're fresh because with older eggs the white shrinks away from the shell over time.

Next time:

Use eggs that are older which is usually never a problem around here as the longstanding grocery challenge is to get stuff that is actually fresh. Add salt to the water to facilitate easy shell removal and if you've lucked into fresh eggs the one and only time you didn't need them, age your eggs on the counter over night. This is a problem for me as I didn't know I wanted egg salad until this morning.

Challenge 3

In a sweeping, rash decision last week, I cleansed the refrigerator of jars that had been open for some time and this included my mayo. I forgot about that.

Use this link to learn how to make your own mayo: Or this is how I did it: two egg yolks, 325ml (cup and a quarter) veg oil, one tablespoon of vinegar or lemon juice and salt. Combine all ingredients except for oil. I used an immersion blender and it was too fast but it worked anyway. Whisk the lemon juice and egg yolk mixture as you slowly pour oil into it. Slowly! What you are doing is emulsifying the oil with the egg and you have to allow the egg to incorporate the oil at its own pace or it will rip you a new one. The immersion blender keeps things hopping as you slowly add the oil and makes it seem like you're going faster.

Note: Doing it my way, you end up with perfect mayo just like the kind you get out of the Hellman's jar you buy at the store. Sometimes it's the second try but it works and when it does it's awesome.

Be sure and wrap your immersion blender cord up after use as it twined itself around my ankle and tripped me. At this point I was already maxed on frustration as I failed my first mayo attempt, after breaking the egg yolks and having to start again, AND spilling it all over the counter top.

By the time I realized I was out of mayo I was ready to hit the McDonald's drive through for a Double Quarter-Pounder with cheese, extra, extra pickles but I remained steadfast in my resolve to reject all fast food for a month.

Challenge 4

No lettuce. Yes, I went to the store to get iceberg lettuce and came home with a thousand other things except lettuce.

I used romaine. It's bland enough to give you crunch without adding its own flavour.

Note: do NOT use radicchio as a substitute. In fact, never buy radicchio unless it's to taste it for the first time and learn why you should never buy it again.

So bottom line, I got an egg salad, no whites, with shredded romaine on hot dog buns and a side of ankle hurt. Can't wait for dinner! It's going to be chicken wings and fried potato medallions, Caesar salad and a possible amputation!

The potato chip caramel squares were meh. A waste of chips. I feel terrible now because the Lad actually whimpered a little when I crushed the bag of chips and added them to the cereal. The sweetness completely overtook the chips and you know I'm not a lover of sweet st00f.